The Independent Stitch

Genghis Khan exhibit, Denver Museum of Nature and Science

I'm about six blog posts behind what's in my head. I'm also spinning and writing on a serious deadline (and putting together a Ravelry ad campaign in the hope of picking up enough income to float Nomad Press and me through this time of non-paying, absolutely must-do-for-many-reasons work).

However, I was just writing a quick Facebook note on the exhibit on Genghis Khan that I went to last night at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, courtesy of friends who are members and invited us to join them, and thought I'd put a short recap in here.

There will be no photos, because taking photos was not allowed. We all left saying that we have to go back, and walked to the car planning how to do that. We also all have different interests: I was the only textiles person, supported in that by my daughter, who took a comprehensive path through the rooms in the hour we had before closing. We had to make the trip to the city after a full day of work all around, so our time there was too short. (We also enjoyed a delicious and varied members-only opening-special buffet supper of Mongolian foods.)

We got a pretty thorough look at the first half of the exhibit, and as the staff was announcing the museum's imminent closure we skimmed the second half to get an overview and plan our return trip. Most textiles are in the second half of the exhibit, with enough just in the first half to have made yesterday's trip a stellar event for a fiber nut.

In that first part, there are some sleeper-but-gorgeous silks (noblewoman's burial series). There are two gowns, extremely faded and damaged—but look closely at the brocade work, and see the way the hems are faced with coarser fabrics, and what graceful shaping there is on the sleeves! (As I look closely and in relative solitude at the cloth, large numbers of people walk past me and the fabrics to see the mummy herself, resting in a secluded area, and then out again to the explosions that demonstrate Genghis Khan's invention of the modern army and of sustained warfare. I experienced those, too. . . .)

In a flat case in the armor area there's a fortified vest made primarily with what looks like a couple of yards of blue heavy chambray. . . . Most folks move around this case with a quick glance down: they've seen things like this on the rack or the bolt at Walmart. Oh, but no, and oh, my: all handspun, and if I had a strong magnifying glass I might be able to see clearly enough through the low-set case to confirm my guess that they are singles. The lining is coarser than the outer shell of the vest. Indigo-dyed. Not only handspun, but made with either handspindle or driven spindle: the timing predates flyer wheels, which were not prevalent in this part of the world in any case (all the Egyptian cottons also predate wheel-and-flyer technology by a long span, of course, as do many others of the world's most exquisite fabrics).

Great pottery, too. Not much time to look at it on this trip.

And some absolutely breath-taking calligraphic pieces, some in Mongolian script (Genghis Khan introduced writing in his home region), and a Chinese version of an earlier Mongolian book that was lost, and then a comparatively very recent piece that is also remarkable, a 19th-century genealogy of Genghis Khan (ink on cotton) that belongs in one of Edward Tufte's books, if it isn't already there: unusual and clear visual presentation of information. As my daughter noted, it's much more effective at conveying its content than the customary-to-us family tree.

There are also performers from the Mongolian community featured in the exhibit area daily—their placement somewhat impedes looking at the artifacts where they're stationed, but in the case of the dancer I watched, well worth the trade-off and a loop back through that area on another occasion to check out the walls and cases. I'm guessing the dancer we saw was Dugluun, based on brief conversation with her after her performance—how many highly skilled, seventeen-year-old contortionist dancers who have been training since they were seven are likely to be in Denver? She is like an extremely graceful and flexible yogini, her poses accompanied by a traditional Mongolian fiddle player of similar youth and equally distinct, of quieter, beauty. Seeing the young people so adept in these traditional arts was an extra treat. (P.S. An older man asked the young woman after her dancing what, basically, she thought the long-term negative effects to her body might be of the flexing she's doing. My guess is that she'll be in a lot better shape in forty years than most football players, ballerinas, or computer-based office workers.)

If you're within driving distance of this museum, or elsewhere that this exhibit travels, check it out. The textiles are not the big draw for most visitors, of course, but they're abundant and worth a pilgrimage to investigate. The cases around them are far less crowded than other parts of the show, too.

Artposium travel 4: Glenwood Canyon

The interstate east of Glenwood Springs passes through Glenwood Canyon, one of the most beautiful places on earth. Traveling through the canyon always combines both delight and cringes of discomfort for me, close to tears. I remember it from the 1950s, when we would drive to my grandparents' house. I remember peering from the back seat of the car, rolling along the narrow two-lane road without guardrails (this was before interstates, of course), across the tumbling, shining water, studying the light on the rocks, and following the railroad tracks on the other side, appearing and disappearing as they traveled in the open or through tunnels.

At that time, the canyon was obviously the thoroughfare of its time, with both cars and trains traveling through it, although the natural features of the place far outweighed the human intrusions. It still is the thoroughfare of its time, although now the road is a massive interstate, intricately constructed to damage the canyon as little as such a project can. However, the balance between geology and engineering has shifted.

Whenever it's even remotely feasible (nearly always), I take a rest stop and walk down to the river and re-imagine what this place was like a half-century ago.

I think what I really need to do is bring my bike. There's a trail the whole length now. Biking wasn't possible before the massive construction, because the roadway was so narrow. Maybe I can relocate the magic by traveling on two wheels.

But that's for another trip, and it would have to be a trip that was planned for that purpose. It's hard to break loose to just go somewhere just because, but I may have to figure out how to make that happen.

Here's a view looking east from one of the rest stops:

And here's looking west, from the edge of the Colorado River at the same rest stop:

While the water looks moderately calm above, a significant piece of what I remember is this:

Must come back with the bike. Sixteen miles (26km) one way, a total of thirty-two (52km). I think I would like it. I think my close-to-tears might be of the good kind.

Artposium travel 3: McClure Pass (part of the West Elk Loop Scenic Byway)

West Elk Loop, from Hotchkiss through McClure Pass, Paonia, Redstone, and Carbondale

The area around McClure Pass is known for the brilliance of its aspens in the fall. The aspens are ailing in parts of Colorado, and there's a lot of beetle kill in the evergreens, but the colors on these mountains last weekend, from a mix of vegetation and geology, were still breathtaking.

Aspens are fascinating; they are actually colonies, rather than single, isolated trees.

Much variety along the route:

This is Mount Sopris, an iconic part of the Roaring Fork Valley, a mountain everyone from Glenwood Springs to Carbondale and beyond identifies as a beacon of "home":

McClure Pass is open most of the winter, except when there's a heavy snowfall or a mudslide. As you travel through the pass, however, the "falling rock" signs aren't kidding. Boulders the size of large elephants rest on the road's shoulders.

I'd like to do the rest of the West Elk Loop some time, including the thirty-one miles (49km) of gravel road that complete the circuit. I also want to stop and take a look around in Redstone and Paonia.

Artposium travel 2: toward and in Delta County

The first evening's event of the Artposium took place in Hotchkiss, at the Creamery Arts Center, which is worth going out of the way to see. Jack Roberts spent his weekend at home producing some of his wonderful black-and-white photographic prints that are going on display at the Creamery this week. It's precision work: he's able to do two or three prints a day, and his goal by the time the exhibit goes up is ten.

Because I was headed for Hotchkiss, the western portion of the West Elk Loop Scenic Byway was the most direct route to my destination. I went back the same way, although in both directions I didn't have time to wander and explore. When I was westbound, I needed to be at the reception before it ended, and when I was eastbound I wanted to be home before I was too tired to be driving. Because I left about 4 p.m. and it's about a seven-hour drive, figuring in brief stretch-the-legs breaks, that didn't leave any time for side trips. . . . I'll have to go back again.

My mother did a bunch of her growing up in Glenwood Springs, and when I was young my grandparents still lived there. I have vivid and treasured memories of the area, although I haven't spent much time there (or driven the roads I took this weekend) since I was quite small. So I wanted to look around, even if just in passing.

Delta County

At the west end of my travels, Delta County offers dramatic views full of contrasts. I took this photo as I was traveling back down to Cedaredge from Red Mesa Grange, where we spent the morning cooking with Howard Dubrovsky.

The area is geologically fascinating. It also demonstrates the effects of water on a landscape. This is a closer view of the area shown above.

I found it impossible to take photographs that adequately capture the scope or the layering of the mesas, although that didn't keep me from trying.

Artposium travel 1: One of the Colorado Scenic Byways

Last weekend, when I attended the Artposium in Delta County, Colorado, I stayed with Priscilla GIbson-Roberts and Jack Roberts. The Artposium's topic was food, and we ate wonderfully throughout the official event.

Priscilla and Jack value the garden and the table as well, and breakfasts, before the official day began, were also delightful: oatmeal cooked with garden fruits, homemade grape juice, Icelandic pancakes rolled around jam made from homegrown strawberries. Priscilla attended part of the Artposium, but during other parts she was at home slow-roasting tomatoes from their garden, because they'd just had their first frost.

When I stopped back by the house to say goodbye before heading east again, Jack had made ice cream with more of their garden's strawberries (this year produced a more-than-abundant crop; they were talking about strawberries like most people talk about zucchinis). Fortunately, I hadn't eaten to capacity at the lunch: almost, but not quite. I initially said no to the ice cream, then, when I realized it was homemade, thought I might be able to handle a tiny bowl . . . exquisite.

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I chose to drive from the Front Range to Delta County, scene of this Artposium, by way of the interstate only as far as Glenwood Springs, where I turned off onto the highways that lead to Carbondale, Redstone, and Paonia. This constitutes half of the Colorado Scenic Byway known as the West Elk Loop, and goes up over McClure Pass, reputed to be one of the best aspen-viewing locations in a state known for aspens (although they're only in the mountainous sections). And this is peak aspen (and elk-bugling) season.

I've loved exploring the less-traveled parts of Colorado, although I tend to do so only in the course of a need to be somewhere other than home (usually work). But I figure if you've got to be somewhere, you might as well enjoy the journey.

My most recent, and by far the most useful and beautiful, guide to the landscapes of Colorado is Colorado Scenic Byways: Taking the Other Road, with text by Susan Tweit and photos by Jim Steinberg. Jim takes fantastic photographs (and lets me see what the place I'm traveling looks like in other seasons, too). Susan's text takes me under the surface of the places I'm seeing with enough detail to be satisfying. On this trip, she especially helped me enjoy the rocks, which are extraordinary.

Colorado Scenic Byways is actually two books: both have text and photos, but the big one is for browsing and the smaller atlas is for use on the road. They stay safely in a slipcase when they're not being enjoyed. Great idea, beautifully accomplished. It won ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Award and the Colorado Book Award, and never did a book (or set of books) more deserve that type of recognition.

Getting back on track with the next post, after my rhapsodic outburst. . . .

Artposium in Delta County: Dinner Stories--cooking with Howard Dubrovsky

Saturday afternoon at the Artposium, we had three fine presentations:

Writer Katherine Leiner, of Colorado and New York, has conducted 130 interviews of people between the ages of 19 and 38 who are going back to the land in search of good food for her upcoming book called Young and Hungry.

Chef Howard Dubrovsky from Toronto demonstrated that contemporary molecular gastronomy is within reach not just of diners with very deep pockets but can be played with in the kitchens of regular folks as well. . . . He's opening a restaurant in Toronto, and it looks like it would be fun to visit. . . . (Howard's a vegetarian and a beer connoisseur.)

Multimedia artist Cathi Schwalbe-Bouzide, also known as the Corn Lady, comes from Chicago and I felt like I'd known her a long time, even though we'd just met. She grows corn in the city and keeps people surrounded by concrete aware of their agricultural heritage and the necessity of growing things. She's obviously having a great time with her art.

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Sunday morning, the farm-and-vegetable group of Artposium participants gathered at a grange way out on a mesa to cook lunch for fifty people under Howard's tutelage. Howard is not only a gifted culinary artist, he's a wonderful teacher.

Here's what he had to work with:

• sixteen people, ranging in skill level from those who had been told to stay out of the kitchen all their lives to someone who had run a catering business (most of us were in the middle)
• a grange kitchen with broken plastic colanders, not enough knives or other tools, and no really big pots
• a fridge where "keep cold" was implemented as "lightly freeze"
• just over three hours

So first we put all the food out and got oriented to how this would work: Howard said he was taking the day off and we would be doing the cooking. We did do the cooking, but he didn't exactly take the day off. We also got oriented to the health processes: which sinks we would wash our hands in, which were for washing food, which were for dishes, and how all the procedures needed to take place in each of those locations.

He divided us into three teams—five, five, and six people—and put each team in charge of two of the dishes that would be served. Everyone in the symposium would be arriving for lunch, for a total of about fifty people. The other participants were elsewhere for the morning, either learning how to make wine or making pear strudel.

My team was responsible for the carrot soup and the spaetzle.

On the main counter to the left of the sheet of paper was the working area for the savory tart (its team is shown in the photo above with Howard). To the right of the paper was prep area for the most complex of the salads. The soup-and-spaetzle team set up at the round table in the background, although we hadn't moved our stuff when I took this photo—our two quart bottles of malt liquor are still at the far end of the counter.

Here's what the kitchen looked like for most of the morning:

That's thirteen of the seventeen people all working in the same space simultaneously. I was taking a photo. The other two participants and Howard were over at the prep areas. The only person whose face you can see in this photo is Cathi Bouzide, the Corn Lady, who did get to prep the corn for the salad. Writer/presenter Katherine Leiner is in the red Dinner Stories apron. At front right is one of my team members, Ila Pound.

Come to think of it, the two missing participants are the rest of my team! They were a father-and-son pair. I must have ducked out to take a photo as a quick break from peeling and chopping carrots or mixing spaetzle dough. It took a really long time to mix enough spaetzle dough for fifty people.

So everyone's accounted for at the moment of that photo. And that's pretty much what the kitchen looked like for a solid three hours.

Finally it was time to lay out the feast.

Howard presented our dishes to the entire gathered group, from least complex (toward the kitchen) to most complex (foreground). Hmm: the spaetzle and the soup (black pot) are both at this end. The adjacent bowl is the ceviche, which was the only non-vegetarian dish. I think which dishes were placed where could be debated. That tart looked pretty complex (it's hiding in the middle).

Wait a minute! That was supposed to be six dishes, two per team, and at the finale we laid out nine dishes, going with the flow of what was available and how it fit together.

1. lentils with Moroccan spices
2. savory tart
3. heirloom tomatoes and olives
4. celery slaw
5. ceviche
6. carrot soup
7. spaetzle
8. salad with greens and colorful vegetables
9. medium-cooked eggs (really served as sort of a condiment: they were cooked fully, but the middles were the consistency of jelly)

Howard brought plans for each dish, but no recipes. We cooked by following our noses and tastebuds from the starting point to the finish line, with Howard's help along the way as we used unfamiliar ingredients—and familiar ones in unfamiliar ways.

Here's the centerpiece salad: greens, plus a lot of vegetables, many of which were lightly blanched to take off the raw edge (the yellow and red beets were gorgeous; this was also where Cathi's corn went):

Here's the celery slaw:

And the salad of heirloom tomatoes and good black olives:

I missed getting a photo of the Moroccan spiced lentils, but here's the savory tart with caramelized onions and other things—it was hard to tell what exactly was in it, but it was exquisite. It was topped with a pear compote:

That's the edge of our spaetzle at the right. Here's a better photo:

We cooked spaetzle in a little pot of boiling water all morning, batch after batch after batch. We were a lot better at cooking spaetzle at noon than we were at 10 a.m. It's purple because the liquid it was made with was purple carrot juice (the plan was to use beet juice, but that couldn't be found and purple carrot juice could). It was dressed with a reduction of butter and more purple carrot juice and dressed with herbs.

Here's our soup:

The soup is in two pots because we didn't have a single pot that was big enough. We started it by infusing olive oil with orange zest and star anise. While that was going on, we peeled carrots and cut them into chunks. We strained the flavoring agents out of the oil, added the carrots, and cooked them until they started to brown and caramelize. Then we added honey and malt liquor, along with some of the braising water from the vegetables for the main salad, and cooked until the carrots were soft. Next, we used a handheld blender to make the soup smooth . . . and poured the soup back and forth between the pots to blend the two batches.

I also missed getting a photo of the ceviche, other than the one above with the whole meal together, but here's my lunch (except for the ceviche, which didn't fit on a vegetarian plate; the eggs, which I helped prepare but didn't eat because I don't like eggs; and the pear strudel, which came later):

Everything there was truly delicious—while we were cooking, I wasn't so sure I was going to like the soup because of the malt liquor, but in the end it was subtle, complex, light, and tasty.

It's hard to say, though, which was better: eating the meal, or cooking it. Howard kept coming around and suggesting next steps and telling us we were doing a great job. So we did!

3,742.7 miles, eight states, a good book, music, and a Wyoming oasis

Ending trip mileage: 3,742.7 (6023.3km). Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, (Oregon again), California, Nevada, Utah, (Wyoming and Colorado again).

Trip average: 31.8 miles per gallon, although I reached 33.7 on the outbound half (the 1100-mile section that did not include Seattle and Sacramento). The car is rated for 19 city, 26 highway. It's a manual, so I have some control over mileage through my driving style, and I think I'm getting the feel of the transmission down pretty well. On last year's similar trip, the overall average was a bit under 30 m.p.g.

Most mornings, I drove enjoying the sound of the air through the open windows. Especially when I was traveling two-lane asphalt, those times were reminiscent of road trips in the '50s and '60s. (I drove interstates when necessary, but logged a lot of miles on well-paved now-secondary highways.)

As the heat increased and the day (and my energy) wore on, I tended to close the windows, turn on the air conditioning (highest registered outside temperature was 101 F / 38 C), and listen to a book or some music.

The book I checked out of the library was Temple Grandin's new Animals Make Us Human:

There's still a long list of holds at the library for the regular books, but I was second in line for the audio version and it was returned just in time for the trip. Perfect!

I especially enjoyed the chapter on wildlife, in which she talks about lab science versus field science. She mentions a discussion she had with her dissertation adviser about experiments without controls. She contended that they could be valuable, and that careful field observation studies the subject in its natural environment where behaviors are not distorted as they are in a lab. He contended that control groups are essential for real science, and that careful observation is insufficient. She countered that astronomy is considered a real science, and all of its methods are based on observation. Often her straightforward logic, part of the way her mind works because of her brain's particular neurology, quickly slices to the core of a question. There's more in the chapter that intrigued me. I'd like to read or listen to the book again.

I wish I could listen to music when I work, but I concentrate so hard that I rarely can. It's nice to have some drive time because I do love music. I haven't figured out how to feed the iPod's sound through the car's speakers (I know it can be done), so I grabbed CDs. It's interesting to try to grab a collection of what I might want to listen to on a particular trip. What would I be in the mood for, given the likely landscapes and events, for the next three weeks?

I didn't have time to listen to everything I took with me, mostly because I do like quiet, and there were lots of good options I left at home. Here's some of what I listened to, a whole bunch of proven favorites (often several albums by an artist or group) and a couple of new discoveries:

• The Wild Tchoupitoulas (ongoing thanks to my brother-in-law for introducing me to this album years ago)
• The Rankin Family
• Linda Ronstadt (including one album with Aaron Neville, a nice follow-up to Wild Tchoupitoulas)
• Wolfe Tones
• Anonymous 4
• Grand Dérangement
  
• Dixie Chicks
• Ken Woodard
• Golden Bough
• Paul Simon
• Sweethearts of the Rodeo
• Capercaillie
• O Sister 2
• Kathy Mattea

I took, but didn't listen to, a couple of albums of Andean music and several shape note collections. I listen to those relatively frequently when I'm at home. No classical music in the CD set: not great for staying awake while driving. I had some on my iPod and listened to it during non-driving times.

Nevada and Utah, as I've mentioned, were not great spots for vegetarian food for the traveler. Neither was western Wyoming. So toward the end of the trip, I hoped to encounter a particular location in Laramie, Wyoming, at a time when it was open:

 

It was Monday, a day when many restaurants at home close, and a few minutes after 11. It looked pretty quiet on the street.

 

They'd just opened for the day. Whew. I rarely have room for dessert, but I think a couple of days of short rations left space. I made it through the peach-raspberry cobbler, after a veggie reuben and delicious kale slaw. I ordered a slice of vegan chocolate cake to go, to share with my daughter, because by this time I was about an hour from home. It was all worth waiting for.

If you're ever in Laramie and need healthy food, check out Sweet Melissa. Downtown, by the railroad tracks. No website.

Covering ground: out of California, to Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming

As I write this, it's time to get home. I've been working, but now I need to get different sorts of work done, and I need to be back in my usual surroundings to do that. I've had to cover another 1100-plus miles (1770+ km).

California, across the Sierra Nevada

 

 

Into the state of Nevada

There was a drastic change of scenery from the part of California I'd just left. I've been through all these parts of the world by car before, but it's been a long time.

 

 

Traversing these places, one becomes a connoisseur of light, vegetation, and rocks: colors, angles, relationships. Also stunned by the thought of coming across these miles and miles and miles on foot or horseback, or by wagon, at times when there were no roads or wayfinding aids. Or cooling breezes. And where the winters can be severe.

I didn't find the good Japanese restaurant in Carson City. Unfortunately. And I didn't have time to research vegetarian options along the route; there probably weren't many.

I've used up my stash of Luna bars and Larabars and the Annie Chun's dinners I brought along (with the hotpot to heat the water to prepare them). I've picked up apples and tea and yogurts and juice at grocery stores along the way, although in Nevada—for the first time I can remember this has happened—I could only find good yogurt in quarts, which aren't very practical for traveling. Usually being vegetarian is no problem. It probably wouldn't be in Nevada if I were there long enough to get my bearings.

Cresting a hill into Utah

As diverse as each state's landscape is, the arbitrary political units also end up having geographic identities. I came to the top of a rise, caught the view, and thought, "Yep, that's Utah!" And it was. Not that all of Utah looks like what I saw, but the scene definitely wasn't Nevada any more.

 

That white stuff is sand, and it stretched on both sides of the road for as far as I could see. It's very specific sand—the Bonneville Salt Flats, where land speed records are set:

 

This is what water looked like in the same area:

Not so different.

East of Salt Lake City, the colors and topography changed drastically:

 

There's a WHOLE lot of road and bridge reconstruction going on in the seven states I've been traversing. Each state has a "Putting America to work" sign near its border, although never in a spot where I can reasonably take its picture. The accomplishments are not busy work: the differences between worked-on and un-worked-on stretches are significant. The old infrastructure was falling apart.

As I drive along, I keep having an unrealistic but engaging (to me) fantasy in which half of the new pavement gets turned over to bikes and other alternative, low-impact modes of transportation. Lots of changes would need to support that shift: differently spaced rest areas and food and sleep resources (which would mean jobs spread across the landscape as well), plus widespread use of CycleTotes for kids and elders (and dogs). (CycleTotes are really easy to haul.)

It'd be a slow way to travel, but nowhere near as slow as a wagon train. We'd need to solve a whole different set of problems than we are currently concentrating on, maybe some more interesting ones, like figuring out ways to temper the effects of heat on the travelers or how to make travel in winter possible (which it isn't in any case in many spots along this route), but I ponder how that could be done . . . clothing? minor redesign of cycles? lots of possibilities.

Buckminster Fuller would have sketched out not only the challenges but a full complement of possible solutions. I think about his calculations of the amount of gas wasted by cars at stoplights. I just have time to form the initial idea and then move on to the next task. . . . Then again, he got along well on four hours of sleep a night!

I've seen many people traveling by bike in certain sections of this trip: Portland, Sierra Nevada, east of Salt Lake City, even in long, hot, dry stretches of I-80 through Wyoming! Anyway, this smooth new pavement would last longer if it were used mostly by bicycles. . . . I know it would take a long time to get places. . . . That might be part of the fun, if we changed our expectations. . . .

If it's windy, it must be Wyoming. . . .

In the photo, you can't see the little flags flapping away. They were. There were also bison in an adjacent field, with a "bison are dangerous" sign on one fence (the other fence had a sign with "buffalo are dangerous"). But the bison were sleeping on the far side of the field, and I couldn't get a good picture of them.

Back on the road and a little farther east—about 27 miles into Wyoming—I saw a large wind farm, a handy demo of the principles in the interpretive signs at the information center:

Last year on this route (I-80), we saw some wind farms in the distance, and also turbine blades being trucked across the state. I think those blades have been installed. That wind farm along the horizon is much closer to the road than anything we saw last year. The education center in the first Wyoming photo talks about how to get involved in the wind farming program.

This is the same farm, closer up. I couldn't get a really good photograph. The view of the turbines was great but there was no way to pull off the highway and snap it.

The Wyoming department of transportation buys signs by the gross that say "High wind possible" and "next five miles" (small rectangle below the high-wind yellow diamond). They're not placed every five miles, but it seems that they are!

I also keep thinking about all the buildings whose roofs could have solar panels on them. When panels are mounted on existing structures, they don't add any elements to the landscape that aren't already there, which I consider a big plus. I wonder what type of reworking of social and economic forces would let everyone who wanted to install solar panels do so. Same thought last year. No solar panels on my house yet.

That's some of the stuff I ponder while driving across hundreds of miles of Western landscape, with relatively few interruptions by towns and other distractions.

I'm writing this in a motel room in Rawlins, Wyoming. By the time it's posted, I should be home and may have managed to unpack the car. I've got a handful of books to edit, one to continue writing, and a pair of socks to finish knitting. . . .

A foray into California to see long-time friends

I'm still on the road back from Sock Summit in Portland, Oregon. It's quite the trip.

Since I needed to be in southern Oregon, I looked at the map and traced out the possibilities of getting into northern California to see spinner/weaver/dyer/multifiberist Stephenie Gaustad and master wheelmaker (among other things) Alden Amos. I haven't seen them in way too many years. I tried to get a visit in last year, but the mileage and timing didn't work at all. This time . . . well, what's a few hundred miles and another day?

These posts will continue to be long on photos and short on words. I've been doing a lot of looking. The constant variations in the landscape fascinate me.

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In transit

Welcome to California. STOP: "Are you transporting any fresh fruit?"

 

Lovely rest stop:

 

(I should have taken a comparison one in Nevada two days later, but I didn't stick around long enough there.)

Mount Shasta:

I've also been looking at a lot of this:

 

The driving has been amazingly pleasant, except for within a certain radius of Sacramento. Drivers became precipitous and rude. Wound way too tight. I was there about 3 in the afternoon but they acted like they had been dealing with both rush hour and construction zones indefinitely. I revamped my route on the spot and took a longer road that got me out of there faster.

It also took me past this:

 

I didn't know until I saw Alden that this is Rancho Seco, a nuclear plant that has been decommissioned. I found the sight of the cooling towers above the vineyards disturbing. Apparently, the area is now a park. (I also saw a pair of cooling towers while driving in southwest Washington, but I can't figure out what site they were. Washington's nuclear sites have been elsewhere in the state, and although I could have seen something that large in Oregon the Trojan site's single cooling tower was demolished in 2006.)

About then, I was wondering where the heck Stephenie and Alden lived, and why they lived there, and whether adding this piece to my trip was such a good idea. . . .

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Hurray!

Fortunately, the Dragonfly Farms (Stephenie and Alden) part of the state of California is delightful.

 

I got a tour of the studios and workshops, where both Stephenie and Alden craft the tools to do fine textile work (and do a lot of fine textile work, and bookbinding as well). I got to watch Alden shape the accelerating wheel for a banjo charkha (lathe work, done freehand).

Supper was exquisite—a multi-bean soup with fresh garlic, a mix of zucchini and hominy, and pineapple-lime juice—and since the topic had come up we watched the 1935 Max Reinhardt version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (with James Cagney as Bottom, Mickey Rooney as Puck, and Olivia de Havilland as Hermia).

Then we stayed up later than any of us usually do, talking and spinning (I got to spin on Stephenie's bull-pup, and on two lovely little tahkli spindles, both of local fabrication). I was so tired I was drafting with the hand I don't usually use to draft and figured that I was just exhausted and haven't spun cotton in a while. . . . I figured out later, in the middle of sleeping, that I'd been drafting with my less agile hand. . . . Considering that, I'd done pretty well!

In the morning, we looked at textiles that required magnification to be fully appreciated. I hope to have more posts on that later, although I need to figure out how to get pictures of really tiny stuff.

Anything I say about Stephenie and Alden is inadequate, except that I'm so glad I got to see them. Even after too many years, we picked up just where we'd been, or better. . . .

 

Visiting Soays (rare sheep!)

I'm still on the road—getting ready to leave a motel in Elko, Nevada—so there will be photos here but not much text.

A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of visiting some folks who have Soay sheep. Soays are as close as we have to the original domesticated sheep. They were located only on one island well offshore of western Scotland, and may have been there for thousands of years. A small population on a rock out being battered by the Atlantic Ocean is vulnerable, so now there are satellite flocks elsewhere.

Priscilla and Steve Weaver at Saltmarsh Ranch have a large satellite flock and are working on maximizing genetic diversity within the breed. Steve is a geneticist. They have both British and American Soay flocks. They are in love with their Soays. It's very easy to see many reasons why.

Soays in the morning:

Soays are tiny sheep, which doesn't exactly show in these photos.

 

Their friend and guardian, Isaac, who is significantly larger than they are:

He keeps coyotes away. There are four guardian dogs with the Soays at Saltmarsh Ranch. I fell in love with Isaac.

Also Molly (Mollie?), the herding associate, who injured a leg recently and has to be on forced rest for a bit.

Although, as you can see, she is always on the alert for a bit of work she might do:

Maybe she could help????? With ANYTHING?????

These Soays are clearing underbrush: eating star thistle and blackberry vines in preference to the grass. They'll eat the grass if all the good weeds are gone.

These are young Soays:

We went out to look over and snap photos of the rams, several of whom are going to other farms fairly soon (with genetically diverse ewes). They are identified as to lineage by the tape on their horns (all Soay rams and many Soay ewes have horns).

 

I have more photos, but I don't have more time at the moment. There's a great article on Soays in the January/February 2008 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.

Yes, Soay wool is fine and spinnable. There isn't much per sheep each year and it tends to be on the short side, and it roos (sheds) instead of being shorn, which makes gathering it a challenge. The quality of the wool, however, is part of what makes Soays the link between wild sheep (which you can see in their coloring and some of their behavior) and early domestication.

And now I-80 calls me again.